WASHINGTON — When President Barack Obama arrives in Africa this week, there will be one notable omission from his travel itinerary: Kenya, the birthplace of his father and home to many of his relatives.

Concerns about Kenya’s political situation have trumped Obama’s family ties. Kenya’s new president is facing charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court, accused of orchestrating the violence that marred the country’s 2007 election.

Ahead of Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory earlier this year, a top Obama administration official warned Kenyans that their “choices have consequences” — a remark that now appears prescient given the president’s decision to skip a stop in his ancestral homeland.

“The optics of that, of a presidential trip, are not what he wants to be demonstrating right now,” said Jennifer Cooke, Africa director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The president will instead visit Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania, all countries that fit more neatly into the democracy and good governance message he’ll tout during his weeklong trip. Obama, along with first lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha, is scheduled to depart Washington Wednesday morning.

The White House did consider a visit to Kenya when they contemplated an African swing during the president’s first term, before Kenyatta’s election. That trip never happened, but Obama pledged that he would, in fact, visit Kenya before leaving office.

“I’m positive that before my service as president is completed I will visit Kenya again,” he said in a 2010 interview with Kenya’s state broadcaster.

White House officials say they respect the right of Kenyans to choose their own leaders. But deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the U.S. also has “a commitment to accountability and justice.”

“Given the fact that Kenya is in the aftermath of their election and the new government has come into place and is going to be reviewing these issues with the ICC and the international community, it just wasn’ t the best time for the president to travel to Kenya,” Rhodes said.

Kenya’s government has been muted in its response to the president’s decision to leave the county off his itinerary.

“It’s for the Americans to decide where Obama goes,” spokesman Muthui Kariuki said. “There are 54 nations on the African continent and he’s only visiting three, so I don’t see the real big deal about not going to Kenya.”

But Sam Ochieng, a political activitist who lives in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum, said the U.S. president was sending a message about Kenya’s political problems by putting democratic values ahead of his personal connections.

“It would be a shame for an American president to come to Kenya and shake dirty hands,” Ochieng said.

By now, Obama’s ties with Kenya are a well-known part of his unique family history. Barack Obama, Sr. was born in the western Kenyan village of Kogelo, moved to the U.S. to study, and met and married the president’s mother in Hawaii. He left the family soon after his son was born.

Obama made his first trip to Kenya in 1988, after his father’s death, and wrote extensively about the visit in his memoir “Dreams From My Father.”

“My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances and grudges that I did not yet understand,” he wrote.

The president visited Kenya two more times, most recently in 2006 as a freshman senator. He was greeted by cheering crowds in the capital of Nairobi and in Kogelo, where he spent time with his grandmother and visited his father’s grave. He and wife Michelle Obama also publicly took HIV tests, part of their campaign at the time to reduce the stigma surrounding the virus.

But Obama’s nationally televised speech criticizing the government for failing to curb corruption or instil trust in its people earned him a cold shoulder from Kenya’s leadership. Kenya’s presidential spokesman said at the time that Obama was ignorant of Kenyan politics and had yet to form an understanding of foreign policy.

Kenya is an important strategic partner for the U.S. in East Africa. But the recent election has complicated the relationship.

Johnnie Carson, who until April served as head of the State Department’s Africa bureau, said in the lead-up to this year’s election that “choices have consequences,” a comment that was viewed as a warning against electing Kenyatta. His remarks were widely criticized as an inappropriate intrusion into a sovereign nation’s elections.

Kenyatta, the son of the country’s first president, has been charged by the ICC as an “indirect co-perpetrator” for the crimes of murder, deportation, rape, persecution and inhumane acts allegedly committed by his supporters in the aftermath of the 2007 elections. He insists he is innocent of any wrongdoing.

More than 1,000 people were killed in the ethnic violence that followed the flawed 2007 contest.

The ICC has pushed back the start of Kenyatta’s trial until Nov. 12. Kenyan deputy president William Ruto will also face similar charges at the international court in September.

Uhuru is like the guy who stole a gadget he does not know how to use. He stole the presidency but now he cannot figure out what to do with it. The biggest culprit is the Kenyan judicial system. The High court let him through on their chapter six ruling and then Mutunga’s court succumbed to the tyranny of numbers intimidation tactics, bribery and incompetency. Now we have a man whose family could not allow to run their business because he was lazy and a drunk running a country of 40 million people.

It is true the People of Kenya has become Zombies who cannot think look how they are conned by corrpt politicians Yet they cannot react as humans >
Before he plunged into politics, the politician had meticulously plotted his cause. In 1989, he married Janet, daughter to one of Kenya’s most recognisable politicians, Ronald Ngala. Kambi made a name in politics in the advent of multi-party politics in 1992 when he joined then ruling party, Kanu, and teamed up with William Ruto and Cyrus Jirongo.

Together, they formed Youth for Kanu (YK ’92), a notorious lobby group of the autocratic Kanu, which patented violence. The movement was synonymous with aggression: its members brutalised anyone opposed to Kanu strongman Daniel arap Moi as he sought re-election in the first multi-party contest. Kambi is quoted explaining: “When Moi won (in 1992), Kanu nominated me as a councillor but I declined the offer.”

In 1997 and 2002, Kambi was Kanu’s pointman in Kilifi. He made a name for himself as “Kazungu Pesa” as a result of his practice of doling out money in a bid to woo voters. In 2007, just before the General Election, he challenged then Kaloleni MP, Morris Dzoro. Kambi is reported to have secured a Sh258 million loan from Africa Development Bank (ADB) using as security the title deed to a 60,000-acre ranch belonging to Giriama
Ranch Company. Although the politician had promised to repay the loan, he did not comply, prompting the bank to resort to the law in efforts to recover its money from the lawmaker.

As things turned out, both the bank and the Giriama Ranch directors were in for a shocker. When ADB went to the ranch in a bid to auction away the land to recover their dues—which by October last year had accumulated to Sh2.6 billion—the directors of the ranch said they were not aware of the loan. What’s more, their title deed (which the bank said they held as security) was still intact!

Vioja mahakamani, that old fabled zilizopendwa of KBC program of yester years cuts through the chase and opeds by among others the respected Yash Pal Ghai and in my opinion should give an ordinary Kenyan a simple undertstanding of what just happened in our beloved republic.

Mshukiwa wa kwanza- Kwa majina mimi naitwa Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, also the president of the republic of Kenya (Otish- this is what I believe is making you give up your Kenyan citizenship; D-it is an indignity to the Kenyan people)

This may sound funny, indeed it is good material for late night comedy, and unfortunately it is a nightmare to the millions of Kenyans who have some dignity left in them. As soon as he is sworn in, UK will be the commander in chief of all the KDF, president of Republic of Kenya. It is impossible for me to imagine the idea that UK and his deputy will be seated behind a desk answering and swearing to say nothing but the truth to a judge in a court either in Arusha or the Hague if at all they cooperate with the ICC.

Willingness to cooperate comes early for RUTO. I pity the guy, he got the court date the same day he was supposed to be celebrating victory – it is like having menses on your wedding night! He will be the litmus test of whether they will honor their court appearances. My instinct tells me they will not, but I could be wrong even though I hope my instincts are right.

Either way, Kenya loses.

Let me explain. It is more humiliating to me and the Kenyan people to have the vioja mahakamani movie I talked about above. It will make Kenya a laughing stock of the world, it is injurious to the Kenyan brand and it will continue to depict Kenya as a failed state whose president and deputy president are being tried in a European court.

Before stopping the cooperation, everything including the kitchen sink will be thrown at the ICC.

First , there will be motions and counter motions sponsored by the washukiwa (the defendants) and the GOK through cousin Attorney General -paid for by the treasury. Sang is in big trouble –he will be alone-hopefully CORD will show some appreciation for his courage for standing up and saying what he believes.

In the meantime, there will be shuttle diplomacy 2.0 starting regionally, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda Tanzania then to the OAU going further east to china. This will be at tax payers expense. We know this failed in the past, it will fail again, but this will not stop the washukiwa from trying it- at the expense o
One of the shuttle diplomacy selling points was that the cases should be brought back to Kenya since there is currently an independent judiciary. This point is still valid but may be mute since the washukiwa will be number one and number two heads of the executive arms and will have some influence over the prosecutor (Please don’t argue here that Tobiko is independent of the president) It will therefore be interesting how this point is fumbled and argued to international friends (China, IRAN, North Korea etc)

If and when UHURUTO fails to show up in court, the president’s and his deputy’s foreign trip budgets might come down. The only foreign trips they may make will be to Sudan and China with stopovers in Iran-even then, they will be risking a take down. This may seriously hit UK hardest since frozen assets visa freeze to you and family never go well especially when you have assets in the west, banking and manufacturing interests that rely on neo colonial powers to market your products. Life can be very lonely up there if the only people you can hang out with are Omar el bashir and some guys you cannot even pronounce their names.